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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23952262">Summerday</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeCarabas/pseuds/DeCarabas'>DeCarabas</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Fugitives Together [65]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dragon Age II</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-03 01:48:24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>330</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23952262</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeCarabas/pseuds/DeCarabas</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Once called “Andoralis” and dedicated to Andoral, the Old God of Unity, this holiday is universally celebrated as the beginning of summer and a time for joy.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Anders/Male Hawke</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Fugitives Together [65]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/633191</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Summerday</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The first days of Bloomingtide are a time for somber reflection and prayer, the chantry sisters of Kinloch Hold had always told Anders, and never mind the kind of festivities depicted in the lurid, swiftly confiscated novels Karl used to sneak into the dorm, or lovingly detailed by a pirate who spent the Blight regaling him and the rest of the Pearl with tales of far-off Llomerryn and Rialto and the ports of Orlais until they all blurred together in his mind into a riot of brilliant colors and music and entangled limbs and garlands thrown over a lover’s neck.</p><p>You should see, she’d say. A million ports, a million festivals lighting up the nights, a million possibilities he was never supposed to see from behind tower walls. Life, real life. Worlds away.</p><p>Kirkwall wasn’t much for Summerday celebrations either. Start of the rainy season. A few flowers in windows, a few white-robed children running to the chantry between the raindrops, huddled under oiled cloaks. Anders didn’t think of Isabela’s stories again for years.</p><p>Llomerryn, Rialto, a million ports he never thought he’d have the chance to see.</p><p>And Val Royeaux, where there’s a whole secret language encoded into those Summerday garlands with Orlesian deadly serious frivolity - cartloads of blossoms carried up to the mansions, probably with coded messages to complement the ham that tastes of despair, but flowers talk down in the less gilded streets too. Parades of masked revelers toss garlands to the crowds with hopes and promises woven into them, <em>love, hope, a change in fortune, a turn for the better</em> written into physical form.</p><p>Justice always did appreciate a bit of symbolism.</p><p>Music rings from every street corner into one great overwhelming noise, and masked, a fugitive in disguise in the shadow of the ruins of the White Spire with its spire toppled, Hawke snatches a garland out of the air and ropes it around Anders’s shoulders, a fragile string of <em>fulfillment</em> tugging him in close.</p>
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